Undone
by august
Summary: "I am made by her, and undone."


Title: Undonebr  
Author: augustbr  
Email: appelsini@hotmail.combr  
Rating: Rbr  
Spoilers: everything until X-Copsbr  
Category: angst, M/Sbr  
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Summary: "I am made by her, and undone." - T. Gunn. br  
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P  
Undonebr  
by august (appelsini@hotmail.com) br  
May 2000br  
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P  
We live outside normal time, Mulder and I.  
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We live in days measured out by funerals, sickness, running and exhaustion. We sleep through nights in cars or motels or planes or each other's couches.  
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We miss holidays, celebrations. We work on New Years Eve, we forget Christmas.  
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Our families worry about us. My brother doesn't trust Mulder, although it has been a long time since I have sought his approval. He does not know how Mulder was on the flight back to Washington after Emily's death. He does not understand how Mulder will sometimes bring me dinner, or wine, or some small stupid present he bought off a street vendor for a buck. They do not - cannot - understand our relationship. They probably think we are sleeping together - why wouldn't they? It's probably the only thing we haven't done together. They do not know the times we sleep side by side in the same bed, we share shampoo (nutmeg smelling Mulder), we fall into each other.  
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* * *  
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He had a photo of us, tacked onto the wall. Sometimes, when I looked around, it struck me as being the only real thing in his office. Surrounded by posters of flying saucers and pictures of rat men, maps of Atlantis and so many unsolved files. Someone gave it to him, left it in his in-tray, or that's what he tells me.  
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In the photo, I'm laughing and his hand is on my back. I do not remember it.  
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It was almost his only concession to reality. I'm his only concession to reality. That pulls at me strangely.  
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Some people hang posters or prints, surround themselves with a fantastical life they can never. Mulder tacked up a snapshot of us, posing into a life of normality that will never be.  
I fade into that life.  
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* * *  
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It is almost two summers ago now since Mulder and I came back from Antarctica. After the ...ship... left the ice, we lay there for a long time. The truth of it is that I don't remember much of what happened, poison infecting my system and ice attacking my skin.  
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What I do remember is sitting in our hotel in Melbourne, after the doctors had finally let us go. They had chastised Mulder but looked at me as if I had gone mad. It's hard to explain how one can end up naked in Antarctica.   
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We were sitting in the hotel restaurant, surrounded by families and waiters and business people. Things I had never expected to see again. We sat opposite each other at a small table and played at being just like everyone else.  
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Except that when Mulder automatically passed me a menu, it broke my heart. Except that when Mulder ordered my drink, I thought I might cry. Except that when I saw us in the mirror, my face was puffy and spidered with blood vessel, Mulder was bruised and cut. We didn't look like any family waiter business person I had ever seen.  
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Our gazes met in the mirror with no acknowledgment. We should have been dead. We were the walking dead, sitting in an expensive restaurant, eating food that we won't remember.  
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"You can't ever leave me Scully." He says quietly. In anyone else, the sentiment would have been possessive. Inappropriate. In Mulder it's simply the truth. I can never leave him, not while I am still alive.  
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Our hands lay side by side on the table and he studies them carefully. "You can't ever leave me." He repeats.  
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"I know." I reply.  
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We order our meals: pasta, wine and bread. I break the bread and pass Mulder a piece. He takes it from me, the silence is not companionable. I an unaccustomed to being stared at so thoroughly by my partner. I am unaccustomed to being uncomfortable in his presence. It has been almost four days since that moment in the hallway and this Mulder is different somehow. A little crueler. Maybe there is a statute of limitations to the amount of times you can come back from the dead and still be alive.  
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I leave the table, I have to. My fingers fumble to find the stupid plastic money of this country. I have no idea how much it is worth, so I leave too much. He watches my fingers press the money down. He watches me walk away.  
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* * *  
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In the next years, he would make up for that night in so many ways. He felt - feels guilty, I know. Not just about that night but about everything, and I do nothing to assuage that guilt. I take some small satisfaction in being able to hurt him. It makes me feel like I have some small power, even when everything else is disappearing.  
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* * *  
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In our seventh year together, Mulder's mother dies. He has no-one now. As he sobs into my shoulder I realise that he is finally alone. It is a terrible thing to lose every member of one's family. More terrible to lose them to the same thing.  
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It is easier for him to think that they killed her than to realise she didn't love him enough to stay alive. Mulder, despite his paranoia and cynicism, still thinks too much of people. In the real world, outside this unnatural time we find ourselves in, Mulder would have died many times over.   
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I stroke his neck with my autopsy hands, with hands that had cut into his mother. We talk slowly, carefully. We have become too accustomed to this grief, Mulder and I. We function too well in desperation. I stay the night, sleeping alone with him in his bed. We wake up on different sides, the space between us warm.  
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* * *  
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He comes to me, one night, or maybe I go to him.  
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I don't remember there being anything memorable about the day - maybe that was a celebration in itself. He opened the door like he was expecting me, like seven years of partnership culminated in that action.  
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I speak slowly, before his damn drawl can talk me out of it. I tell him everything I know: that Einstein fell in love with his cousin, that the sun has only four billion years of energy left, that the Beatles smoked a joint in the toilets of Buckingham palace, that Nietzche was crazy with syphilis when we wrote his most famous works.  
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I emptied my mind in his hallway and he reached out to pull me inside. My back against his front door and his arm extended above my shoulder leaning against it, leaning into me.  
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We kiss and I am suddenly tired. We kiss slowly, his body stretches full against mine as I am pressed back into the hard wood.  
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He follows me into his bedroom. I undress for him like I have done it a thousand times, like we are those normal people in the restaurant. He stands so close to me, I feel his breath on my shoulder.   
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"Scully." He says, the first thing he has said. His gaze fixates on my back.  
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I forget that Mulder has never seen my tattoo. Sometimes, I forget I have it, until I catch a glimpse of it in the mirror and then I stare at the reminder of days clouded by cancer, coldness and distraction. A snake swallowing itself whole. The centre collapsing.  
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I hear him push the breath out of his lungs and feel his lukewarm fingers tracing the colour on my skin. I am standing with my bare back to him, one hand gripping a post of his bed.  
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"God, Scully." He murmurs and I close my eyes, not wanting to hear arousal in his voice, not wanting to feel arousal in myself. I lean back into him and we stand for a while, his forehead resting on my shoulder.  
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In another time, another world, I could take Mulder to bed luxuriously. We could make love to each other, laughing and stroking. In this world, his hands are on my hips as he pushes into me. It's a strange kind of grief as Mulder fucks me to keep away our dead.  
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He moves sharply in me and I welcome that pain. With Mulder moving above me, with his hot weight on my back, I don't quite feel like I'm slipping.  
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Afterwards, he draws patterns on my back with his fingertips. It feels strange and kind.   
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* * *  
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We live outside normal time, Mulder and I.  
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It will end one day, I suppose. He will be shot, or lost, or I will. I will stand at his funeral, or he at mine and it will be measured out in slow time with the sun lapping at our faces.  
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And he will have to go on, or I will. Wondering exactly how to do it because we've always fallen into each other. Wondering how much more we can lose. Wondering whether we've lost it all.   
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***end***  
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http://Appelsini.tripod.com  



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